Sacred texts
Heart of Torah, Volume 1
By Shai Held
In The Heart of Torah, Rabbi Shai Held's Torah essays - two for each weekly portion -open new horizons in Jewish biblical commentary. Held mines Talmud and midrashim, great writers of world literature, and astute commentators of other religious backgrounds to ponder fundamental questions about God, human nature, and what...
Heart of Torah, Volume 2
By Shai Held
In The Heart of Torah, Rabbi Shai Held's Torah essays - two for each weekly portion -open new horizons in Jewish biblical commentary. Held mines Talmud and midrashim, great writers of world literature, and astute commentators of other religious backgrounds to ponder fundamental questions about God, human nature, and what...
Maimonides and the Shaping of the Jewish Canon
By James A. Diamond
This book examines a wide range of theologians, philosophers, and exegetes who share a passionate engagement with Maimonides, assaulting, adopting, subverting, or adapting his philosophical and jurisprudential thought. This ongoing enterprise is critical to any appreciation of the broader scope of Jewish law, philosophy, biblical interpretation, and Kabbalah.
JPS B'nai Mitzvah Torah Commentary
By Jeffrey K. Salkin
For too many Jewish young people, bar/bat mitzvah has been the beginning of the end of their Jewish journeys. When students perceive the Torah as incomprehensible or irrelevant, many form the false impression that Judaism has nothing to say to them. The JPS B'nai Mitzvah Torah Commentary shows teens in...
Sexuality in the Babylonian Talmud
By Yishai Kiel
This book explores sex and sexuality in the Babylonian Talmud within the context of competing cultural discourses, for students of comparative religion.
God and Politics in Esther
By Yoram Hazony
This book explores the political crisis that erupts when the Persian government falls to fanatics and a Jewish insider goes rogue.
How Repentance Became Biblical: Judaism, Christianity, and the Interpretation of Scripture
By David Allen Lambert
How Repentance Became Biblical explores the rise of repentance as a concept within early forms of Judaism and Christianity and how it has informed the interpretation of the Hebrew Bible, or Old Testament. It develops alternative accounts for many of the ancient phenomena identified as penitential.